The starting point of the quest. Fred the Farmer is the man with the straw hat.

To start the quest, talk to Fred the Farmer, who can be found in his house North of Lumbridge, just North of the Combat Academy. Tell him that you're looking for work, and Fred will task you with collect 20 balls of black wool from his black sheep. He will also warn you to watch out for 'The Thing', which he says is a black-hearted shape-shifter who hungers for souls.

To find the sheep, leave his house and climb over the stile on the fence to the West of it, which will take you into their pen. The pen is home to two black sheep. To shear the black sheep, simply click them, and your character will shear them, although there is a chance that the sheep will run away, if this happens, try again. As there are only two sheep, after you have sheared both of them, wait a few seconds and their wool will grow back, allowing you to shear them again.

Spinning the black wool in Lumbridge Castle

Keep doing this until you've obtained 20 pieces of black wool, then go to Lumbridge Castle and go up the stairs to the 1st2nd floor[UK]. The spinning wheel is found in the room South of the one that Duke Horacio resides. Spin the wool on the wheel, and then return to Fred. If you do not have the space to carry all 20 balls of wool, you can make smaller deliveries until you reach the required total. Fred will thank you for aiding him, and he will reward you.

The quest was reworked on 15 December2009. Before the rework, the quest only required normal balls of wool. You could have them all in your inventory before speaking to Farmer Fred if you wanted, making the quest much shorter.

With an update on 24 June2010, the Sheep Shearer and Witch's Potion quests are the first two discontinued quests, meaning no one can start it for quest points. For those who want the reward, they can do the miniquest, but there are no more quest points associated with the task.

For players who completed the quest before the update, the reward was 60 coins, not 2000. Players can collect the remaining 1940 coins by talking to Fred. He will say that the black wool sold unexpectedly well and is giving you some of the profits; however, the only people who can do this are people who sheared white sheep, not black ones.

In the old version of Sheep Shearer, if you tried to give Farmer Fred noted wool, he would say, "What's this rubbish! This isn't wool! It's a note promising to give me wool!" Since you cannot note black wool, you can no longer get him to say this.

With 150 crafting experience, it held the record for the smallest experience reward for any skill given as a quest reward until the release of The Blood Pact.

Andrew Gower said in his Clan Chat that half of the Sheep Shearer quest was available in his game, DeviousMUD, the first version of RuneScape[source needed].

Although this isn't a quest anymore, you can still tell the story of this miniquest to Juna.